As a follow-up to the previous posting on Saab USA’s advertising campaign slogans, I have provided a poll for you to indicate what your favorite advertising campaign slogan is of all time.

There are a number of factors to take into consideration as criteria with these slogans, the product offering, the promotions, the price, the place, economics, etc. If you do cast your vote here, please follow-up with a comment below stating why you think the slogan you voted for, outshines the rest.

ever seen the “saab disagrees” movies? WORST thing ever but its fuc*ing funny as hell.

Best slogan ever: “Find your own road”…. It sums up saab and all its enthusiasts into four little words.

This born from jets slogan sucks. Maybe it was good for a little while and catchy for those people that never knew what a saab was, but now its just played out. I remember someone on saablink.net saying that it would be like GM’s slogan being “Born from locomotives” because they at one time did build train locomotives. “when you use to build train locomotives, you dont build just another SUV” 🙂

Well, I’d scrap “Born from Jets” in a hearbeat if I were Saab (or GM as it were). It doesn’t say a single thing about the cars themselves – it just seems like some sort of vague catch phrase that sounds nice. I guess it implies that they’re fast like jets (at least that’s what I take from it), but while not being slow that really isn’t/shouldn’t be their main selling point at all.

Most of the old slogans, though, seem to capture exactly what Saab was about. My personal favorite was “We don’t make compromises, we make Saabs.” but I like all of them a lot.

In my experience with Saabs I have found that the best Saab ever built was actually a Subaru in Saab clothing. The 9-2x Aero is one of the fastest stock (next to a 9-3 Viggen) and probably THE best handling Saabs. It has the largest availability of aftermarket parts and up until the release of the XWD system, it was the only Saab with a proper drivetrain (the GM junk they use in the 9-7x does not count as a proper drivetrain).

That being said, the best slogan would be an adaptation of “It’s what makes a Subaru, a Subaru.” IE “It’s what makes a Subaru, a Saab.”

What Saab needs as an ad slogan is something that truly defines the products they are producing currently. I would recommend something along the lines of, “Yep, our car parts came from a GM parts bin too! SAAB”.

Find your own road. My pick. That is how I feel at times, get out of my way, especially the extremely slow. 40 mph on the highway, move it. Or a nice twisty road, and people are braking really hard around the corners.

Born From Jets, not my favorite at all. Mitsu makes TV’s, they should referance that in their adds. Picture perfect, or something corny like that.

“Move Your Mind” is the global advertising slogan for Saab, that’s why I left it off. The objective here is to highlight the best slogan used in the United states due to content availability and with the comments and other suggestions, see exactly why it was designated as the best and to communicate that to Saab to figure into their new “advertising” campaign this coming fall.

‘Find your own road’ has always fit me well. Several of the other slogans seem to focus on limited aspects of the of the car. To me, the most important aspect of any car is the balance of all it’s attributes, and how the complete vehicle fits with the owner/driver. Of course, ‘Find your own road’ is a bit vague and doesn’t really say anything about the car, except perhaps that Saabs are different from other cars, or that the owners are different.

I think “Find Your Own Road” best fits me as a member of the Saab community. Stupid “Born from Jets” doesn’t even get the number of air-craft designers right and it’s tired and looks far too GM in my eyes. I love Saabs because they are unique, sporty, smart and used to push the boundaries of design and function. Therefore, “Find Your Own Road” makes sense.
“We Donâ€™t Make Compromises We Make Saabs” is also great (pre-GM), but since they do seem to make compromises (Trollblazer), it doesn’t seem as fitting anymore.

I was a big fan of the “State of Independence” campaign, but in hindsight, it doesn’t make much sense to me. The campaign was launched after GM took 100% of the company, thus making them a non-independent company. BMW’s current campaign that plays up their independence as a company that isn’t owned by a larger corporation makes much more sense, since they are in fact an independent manufacturer. But hey, what are we going to do? GM is keeping saab’s head (mostly) above water.

I believe that the “Welcome to the State of Independence” has been the best ad campaign for Saab. It continued in my opinion where the find your own road left off. What made this a successful ad series was that unlike the traditional car commercial where we see the car cruising along Saabâ€™s were shown being driven and driven hard. They also went along by showing side by side comparison of equal trim level competitors cars and what options were standard vs. extra in one. One of my favorite state of independence was when the camera angle was taken in through the intake and you see the compressor of the turbo spinning and it continues through to looking at the car from the rear accelerating. Ideas and concepts like that are what get consumers and potential buyers interested.

The current form laid out by “Born from Jets” does not work. Yes it lays out a bit about Saabs history but there is no market history in the US that the intended target would not know of Saab. The new formula also fails to show what is unique about Saab to me. You see a car driving in a straight line and it looks nice. Ok but what does that convey to somebody who knows nothing of a car other than it drives.

For Saab ads to be successful a return to the “State of Independence” must occur. Equity has to be built up in the name brand of Saab. Potential customers need to see how a Saab can truly drive and understand that a Saab is not just another car. Most people unfamiliar to Saab will not understand what a turbocharger is and what it does. However seeing a car driven hard and to its potential both in terms of agility and power helps people decide that is a good car. Driving a Saab is like no other car. To be on the highway at 70mph and to drop it to 3rd gear provides full boost and torque for quick effortless passing at an incredible rate of acceleration. Even remaining in 5th and just letting torque pull the car forward is amazing. Help people to see this and convince them to come in for test drives and sales will go up.

Equity in a name. I mentioned it a second ago. Attempting in the “Born from Jets” to enlighten people about Saab’s founding was great but in the US lets face it………how many actual people unless they’ve been around Saabs probably know anything about the brand. I’ve been mistaken for BMW and Audi at times. When a brand has equity in there name you can use commercials where you see the car just cruising and looking nice and that works. This is why the Cadillac ads in the “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit” work so well. Cadillac is well known in the US and has a high standard of quality and respect so there is the equity. They have no need to show there cars going all out. Just show them looking nice and the job of the ad is complete.

If GM wants to produce a successful ad campaign they need to have an ad agency that knows the Saab brand well inside and out and how to market them to a demographic that doesn’t know about Saab. So how do you do that? Truly show the car for what it is but from the Saab angle. Take the Cadillac ad commercial “Heart” where you see the v-series engine being hand built. Apply a formula like that which we see the Saab turbo engine, whether it is the V6 turbo or the I4 turbo being built, and have something about bigger is not always better and then transition it as we see the compressor blade spinning up in a test to a car going full out on a track or real day driving on back country roads. That will turn heads and inform while driving a curiosity to go test drive a Saab and experience it.

“Why be driven when you can drive.”……………..in ten seconds of thinking I came up with that tag line based on the above idea I laid out. I am a die hard Saab driver. I’ve been around the brand since I was born and will be there the day I die. I have two of them. Once stock and one modified. I know how the cars feel, handle, what boost is like, what even more boost than stock is like, and I know the face of unsuspecting drivers in my mirrors when they think there sports car with a high output v6 or a v8 look like as they wonder what just happened. Convey this formula and what it truly means to be Saab and you have a winning formula. I smile everyday I drive a Saab. No other car has done that for me or likely ever will.

Saab is away from the norm on there own path. Small displacement turbocharged engines that beg to be driven every day all out that will put a smile on your face. Again, â€œWhy be driven when you can drive.â€

+1 on the idea that saab needs an ad team that actually knows and loves the product. Not some 25 year old girls that have degrees in “marketing”. Ive met many many people behind saabs advertising and some I was not impressed with to put it nicely. Im glad to say I know of at least one thats now happily working on a marketing team for fabric softeners.

I think you may be thinking of Carlson Marketing in Chicago. I think they are responsible with promotions though with Lowe Worldwide Partners responsible for advertising in print and tv. You may want to check in directly with Saab though.

I love the “we don’t make compromises, we make SAABs.” There’s some truth to it, where else do you have a car that is sporty, roomy, comfortable, powerful and yet relatively fuel efficient. Now I know that is a compromise by definition, but I still love my car.

The poll may be closed, but I will say that “People Who Test Drive A Saab Usually Buy One” is on top for me. This hails from a time when I sold these amazing Swedish cars, and it was so true… my big thing was not talking about the engine in the initial sales pitch, letting the customer scare the living daylights out of themselves, and having the car sell itself merely for its power.

Truth in advertising. Every customer who was looking at other cars besides a Saab test drove one, and took it home a couple days later.

I’m not really a fan of the tagline “The most intelligent cars ever built”,however I do think that campaign was perhaps the most creative Saab ever had.The ads from that campaign addressed just about every angle of Saab & the cars they built in perfect timing with their climbing USA sales.My advice would be to find an agency that’s quirky & innovative,like Exprimental JetSet or something…then again,one of the most famous taglines ever : KILLS BUGS DEAD for Black Flag bugspray was thought up by a “concrete poet”,so maybe an unorthodox approach would be effective & break some boundaries.Regardless of marketing campaigns,Saab should not lose its soul to accountants…solid “left-field” engineering combined with quirky Swedish funtionality is the whole raison d’etre of the Saab brand…

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